Separate, but Equal

H and I took a trip across town chasing what looked like a fire, and then once we found it, decided to continue further across town to take a look around at neighborhoods we don't often get to see. We found the community's old school elementary school first (now out of commission), and then crossed the tracks into what I've always felt to be an almost completely different community. While we were there, we took some pictures of the old school (also now out of commission) over there.

This is an area that is not unfamiliar to me--I take my bike through here regularly--and yet it is not a place that feels like home. Sure, it's the 'Merce, but this is not the community I live in. And the most upsetting factor is that it is the year 2014. Brown v. Board of Education was 60 years ago.

We're not supposed to be a segregated society anymore; I guess, at least not a state-sponsored segregated society. And, somehow, to my dumbfoundedness over the past five years, this little town of 9,100 people remains separate...and unequal.

It was really just brought home today as H and I went through the ruins of this school. It was an erie place--not really much different from the white school we visited first, and yet inside these abandoned rooms echoed the pains of segregation and societal oppression. They echo because this still exists. It was as if this school was not just a ruined memory, but a ruined nightmare that keeps coming back.

I am pained because the Gospel paints a picture of diversity. Even so, God describes diversity as all tribes, tongues, peoples, and nations. Not all colors. Even acknowledging colors as defining to race is absurd, especially in this era. We all bleed the same color; we are all born the same way; we all die the same way. How absurd it is that we used to live this way! How much more absurd that we still continue to live this way!

As I went through this monument to a time past and not really forgotten I couldn't escape the feeling that I just didn't belong. Here I felt separate and not at all equal. We ought to be groaning for the unification of our society for the sake of our joy in the Lord who sees all equal by His Son. All I heard through these broken windows was silence.